


“Hold me down, I’m so tired now”

by Theladydoor23



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Comfort, Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, M/M, Roommates, grad applications and life can be stressful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 19:12:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17689208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theladydoor23/pseuds/Theladydoor23
Summary: Nursey was laying on the top bunk, hands bunched around his sheets, attempting to calm his frantically racing heart. Monsters and chimeras. Doubt and panic. Five hundred pages to read, an essay and four master’s applications to start. Hockey practice. He was trying to be quiet. He couldn’t let Dex see him, couldn’t let him hear. He had to be strong. He attempted to force his thoughts back on the music, a crooning Florence and the Machine number, letting the words etch their way into his mind. Words to cling to, as he lay in the dark, his headphones over his ears, trying not to cry.A bleary voice cut through the lyrics. First, “What’s that sound?” and then, after a pause, and the flare of a phone screen in the dark, “what the hell are you doing up right now?”





	“Hold me down, I’m so tired now”

**Author's Note:**

> tw for panicking about the future etc. Written during one of my own grad school inspired moments of panic.

Nursey was laying on the top bunk, hands bunched around his sheets, attempting to calm his frantically racing heart. Monsters and chimeras. Doubt and panic. Five hundred pages to read, an essay and four master’s applications to start. Hockey practice. He was trying to be quiet. He couldn’t let Dex see him, couldn’t let him hear. He had to be strong. He attempted to force his thoughts back on the music, a crooning Florence and the Machine number, letting the words etch their way into his mind. Words to cling to, as he lay in the dark, his headphones over his ears, trying not to cry. 

A bleary voice cut through the lyrics. First, “What’s that sound?” and then, after a pause, and the flare of a phone screen in the dark, “what the hell are you doing up right now?” 

Nursey pulled the headphones down. He didn’t know what to say. How to explain. How to offer some semblance of a reasonable justification. The words for that story was lost to him, too caught up in the pounding of his heart, his racing thoughts. So when the words came, they came out tumbling and wild, dumping forth like the words on the page when he was writing. Faster than wild horses, and in desperate need of a good edit. 

“It’s always just there, looming. This fear, this panic. What am I doing with my life? It hits me in the middle of the night and I lie awake with my heart beating wildly in my chest, and my mind cataloguing all the ways I’m fucking up my future. And all the things on my to do list, that just keeps getting longer. And I just—I’m just tired. You know? I’m so tired.” 

“It’s 2am, of course, you’re tired.”

“shut up jackass.” 

Silence from the bunk below. 

Finally, a quiet “sorry.” 

“The future is just terrifying. Global warming, the political shit show. People being attacked for trying to find or make a better life. Racism. Fucking Nazis, which apparently we still have to deal with?” His breath caught in his throat. “All this mess and I’m here wanting to spend five years writing a dissertation on romanticism? How can I justify this with everything—” 

Nursey took a deep breath, his nails digging into the soft skin of his palms. 

“Do you know how many people actually make a living in academia today? Who actually get tenure with an English degree?” Nursey took a halting, choked breath. “And who’s to say whether I’m smart enough for all this anyway? Everyone else just seems to know more, to have read more, to have the works of every fucking philosopher memorized. I’m just—I’m just scared.” The last word came out small. It hovered alone too long in the quiet, dark room. 

“Get down here.” 

“What? No.” His limbs felt impossibly heavy. There was no way that he was letting Dex get him close enough to whack. He knew how Dex felt about sleep and his 8:00 am tutorials. 

“Nursey.” 

Nursey didn’t have the will power to refuse. Will power, he thought to himself dryly. He didn’t have any power around Will either. Nursey forced himself up, and down the ladder in the dark. 

Suddenly two arms were around him, pulling him into an embrace. The tears that had been threatening to fall—tears he had been holding back with teeth biting into lips, began to spill out of him. And then he was sobbing, burrowing his face into the worn t-shirt. And Dex—Dex let him cry. He said nothing at first, just carefully maneuvered them until they were both sitting on the bottom bunk. 

“You aren’t stupid.” 

“What?” said Nursey, pulling himself away from Dex’s chest slightly. Nursey’s nose was running. 

“You aren’t stupid you idiot. You're one of the smartest people I know.” 

“But”

“But nothing. You're funny and smart and kind.” 

“Dex-”

“And you love words. You're constantly scribbling in those journals. Underlining random lines in books. I’ve seen you stroking paperbacks.” 

“I-”

“Shut up. I’m still not done. You are so much more then you think you are.” The last part was more of a whisper than the rest, but Nursey could still hear it. 

He pressed his face back into Dex’s shoulder. Let himself take in the comfort of being held by someone else. Someone else that maybe—maybe cared a lot more then he had ever dared himself to believe? 

“What do you need?” said Dex. “To get back to sleep?” 

“I” Nursey started and stopped. 

Dex nudged him gently. 

“I need something to distract me, something to focus my mind. Do you think you could just talk to me for a little bit? To help me focus?”

Dex let go of him. Nursey felt a momentary panic, sitting alone at the edge of the bed in the dark before he felt a hand grab his t-shirt and pull him down. They lay, side by side, crammed into the bottom bunk, heads touching on Dex’s pillow. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time my younger sister decided to put on a play?” 

Nursey settled in, letting his heart find a new rhythm in Dex’s gentle cadence, as he told of the day his sister Caroline forced him to play Puck in an ill-fated performance of midsummer night’s dream. He realized, listening to Dex whisper, that he was going to be okay. Things might not work out, and he didn’t know what the future was going to hold. But he knew that he had people—he had someone—willing to lose precious sleep to help him calm his frantic thoughts. For now, for this moment, that would be enough.


End file.
